Vince Wilfork Postgame Press Conference Transcript

New England Patriots NT Vince Wilfork addresses the media during his postgame press conference at Gillette Stadium on Sunday, October 7, 2012.

Q: This is back-to-back weeks with fumble recoveries. Can you talk about the one you had today?

VW: All the credit goes to my teammates; I just recovered it. I think they did a real good job of fighting on the pile trying to get it. All I did was fall on it and put our offense in a good spot to score, which they did, and put more points on the board.

Q: How tough was it to stop Peyton Manning?

VW: Always tough. Anytime you have a quarterback like that on your squad, the game’s never over. I don’t care how many points you’re up or down, it’s never over. It showed tonight. These guys, they fought. This is a real good football team; Denver is a great football team. The main thing we talked about doing was coming out and executing our game plan, which I think we did pretty well at times. It’s not perfect, but I think we went in knowing how we wanted to play, we played that way and we’ve seen the outcome. Moving forward we’re going to have to do that. We have to be more consistent and just execute game plans.

Q: What are your thoughts on the way you guys finished this game?

VW: It was big. Being able to go out defensively and the offense turning it over and defense taking the field, actually getting the turnover ourselves, that was a big statement for us. That’s two weeks in a row that we’ve shown this defense can turnover and get the ball for our offense and our offense can score points. I think we played well together as a team. All three units played very, very well. That’s how it’s going to have to be. If we want to be successful, we have to play like that. We have to play together as a team, 60 minutes, everybody doing their job and executing well, which we’ve done. It’s good when you come in to see film, you can actually see when we execute, the outcome. When we don’t or somebody falls asleep, how we can give up big plays. Like I said, it’s a good football team. [Peyton] Manning made some great plays, his team made some good plays for him. It was just a good football game we played against a good football team today.

Q: You guys have forced a lot of turnovers over the last few weeks. Are there any commonalities there?

VW: We practice very hard at that: we practice ball drills, interception drills, fumble drills. We put a lot of time and work into it, into going out and being able to force turnovers, getting our offense the ball back. We know as a defense, if we can continue to give our offense the ball, they’re going to move the ball [and] they’re going to give us some points. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about: scoring points [and] stopping guys from scoring points. I think we have a pretty good defense and I think we have a hell of a good offense. If we can continue to play together, this football team will be special.

Q: You were able to get another great performance out of Rob Ninkovich. What is he doing now that he maybe wasn’t doing at the beginning of the year?

VW: You have to talk to him about it. We all work hard, we all put a lot of emphasis into getting better as a team and as an individual. There might be some things you can ask him, ‘Hey, what did you do? What did you change?’ That’s better suited for him.